‘Again With The Dante’?

One reader complained about my once again bringing up Dante in a post. Again with the Dante, he moaned. Which prompted the most excellent versifier Roland de Chanson to deliver the following Evans-Manning-worthy poem:

As Dreher by his hearthstone sat
A cup of cocoa clasping,
Upon him sprang a hell-loosed cat,

That set him sorely gasping.
What ghastly spectre art thou, beast?
Who art my throat a-grasping.

I am the wraith of one deceased
I sang of popes and bishops burning.
I was bethought a grand artiste,

The praise of mortal men ne’er spurning.
For this delict I am doomed to hell,
Perdurant pain my folly earning.

I have to agree with the “Again with the Dante” sentiment. It’s not that I have anything against the Florentine, much the opposite (though his Latin is rather mediocre), but your engagement with Dante feels rather trite most of the time. Really, you tend to talk about your feelings and what Dante would think about X, Y, and Z, which just seems very pedestrian. Also, when you try to describe Dante’s world you usually bungle it – mainly the fact that after the height of papal power in the 11th/12th centuries, Dante’s time was a low point in papal power: the Emperor had stopped caring about what the pope thought, many other kings also ignored excommunication, and the French king tried to kidnap Boniface VIII and have him declared a heretic, which so frightened Clement V that the papacy was moved to Avignon (not then a part of the Kingdom of France). You would also do well to remember that after his expulsion from Florence, Dante became a partisan of the Emperor, even writing a treatise, De Monarchia, in support of the universal empire (which means, like Marsilius of Padua, he didn’t have to care what the popes thought because he had Ghibelline support).

Basically, it would be nice if you talked about Dante in a more profound and accurate manner.

It turns out that the Rockford Institute and Chronicles are focusing on Dante for their annual summer school. If you were to go, I’m sure cranky, old Tom Fleming would be glad to share with you (at length!) how wrong he thinks you are in your interpretations.

Would not “catterel”, which
“does not rise to the level of”
doggerel seem perhaps a bit
ill-named, though, since it is the nature of the heaven-aimed cat to rise well above the level of the earth-bound dog in a mere single bound?

I’m thinking of going over to Balloon Juice and telling them they should quit having football posts because I’m not interested. And then I’ll turn off my computer before the comments reduces it to a smoking hulk.

Thanks for the Evans-Manning kudos, Rod. And for your very gracious compliments both here and in the original thread, too. You’re a good sport to put up with this nonsense! And thanks to everyone else for the good words.

Let me say at the outset that I do enjoy Rod’s posts on Dante. His past ones as well as hopefully future ones. Though I hope he’ll resist the temptation to post on grilled cheese sandwiches.

As for my alleged talent or experience with medieval poetry: I have little of either. In high school, I used to write pasquinades of various unpopular teachers, a habit that made me a frequent guest in the headmaster’s office. Writing them was easy; the hard part was pinning the scurrilous things to the main bulletin board without getting caught. Of course, I denied everything. Nowadays a video camera would be my undoing.

BTW, the “de Chanson” is a moniker from the Chanson de Roland, a medieval poem I actually have read and hated every damn line in it. Such works should not be taught to boys of an age to be more interested in belles filles than belles lettres. An appreciation for French letters takes a certain maturity.

@Charles Cosimano: starting to sniff the sulphurous stench there, Uncle Chuckie? Not too late to doff the devil’s helmet and don the triple crown, you know. We need an orthodox pope. Besides, you’d look good in a camauro.

@Eliana re: the heaven-aimed cat and the earth-bound dog:

I thought it was the cow that jumped over the moon? The cat was merely first violinist.

Now, I am no eschatologist (I was going to train as one until I noticed the starting salaries), but I believe there is an apocatastatic hope that dogs will enter Heaven. As to cats, one may concomitantly hope the maledict malkins may not.

Thanks or your response Chanson. It sounds like you received a good liberal education (in the medieval and Renaissance sense) at whatever private school you went to (in addition to your native intelligence and work habits, of course), which I think explains matters. Funny how talents often grow out of teenage malice; I guess life is like that.